Lady Herbert of Cherbury, the daughter of the Earl of Bridgewater. He was in general greatly respected for his virtues, and his polite and engaging manners. At the Restoration, he was re-established in his former places at Court, and he composed the Coronation Anthem. He died in 1662, and was buried in Westmin

ster Abbey.

Lawes was the favourite composer of his day. He set to music all the songs in the mask of Colum Britannicum of that sweet poet Thomas Carew, and all the lyrics of Waller; he also composed all the airs and songs in the plays and poems of William Cartwright, and of the Christmas Odes in Herrick's Hesperides. He further composed tunes for Sandys' Paraphrase of the Psalms, published in 1638. He and his brother William also composed a volume of Psalms, which was not published, it is said, till 1648; though Milton's sonnet, prefixed to it, and addressed "To Mr. H. Lawes, on the publishing of his Airs," is dated February 9, 1645-6. Lawes published in 1653, Airs and Dialogues for One, Two, and Three Voices, etc., dedicated to those two illustrious ladies, his constant patronesses. After his death, in 1669, appeared a Second Part of these Airs and Dialogues.

Lawes was said to have been the introducer of the Italian style of music into England. His great merit as a composer would seem to have lain in his just adaptation of the music to the sense of the words; making it, as Milton expresses it, "span words with just note and accent." Dr. Burney however, in his History of Music, speaks slightingly of Lawes as a composer.

These were the only friends of the early years of Mil

ton of whom we have any account. Doubtless he had others, but their names are unknown, carent quia vate sacro. Of this we may be sure, that they were of his own rank in life; for, as we have already observed, and shall observe again, he sought not the society of the great in the estimation of the vulgar.

After his return from Italy, and when he was settled in a house of his own, and was known as an able controversial writer, his acquaintance was sought, and he obtained a new circle of friends. Of these the best known are the following.

SAMUEL HARTLIB.

Samuel Hartlib, to whom Milton dedicated his tractate on Education, was the son of an eminent Polish merchant who had settled at Elbing, in Prussia. His mother was an Englishwoman; and he came and settled in London, as Warton thinks, about the year 1640. While there, he occupied himself in editing tracts on agriculture, written by various persons; and his merits were deemed to be such that a handsome pension was settled on him by the Parliament. His own words, in one of his prefaces, are: "As long as I have lived in England, by wonderful providences I have spent yearly out of my own betwixt £300 and £400 a year sterling; and when I was brought to public allowances, I have had from the Parliaments and Councils of State a pension of £300 sterling a year, which as freely I have spent for their service and the good of many." He also says that he had "erected a little. academy for the education of the gentry of this nation, to advance piety, learning, morality, and other exercises of industry, not usual in common schools."

Hence we

see why it was to him that Milton addressed his treatise on education.

At the Restoration, as few of the engagements of the preceding Government were kept, Hartlib's pension remained of course unpaid. At the close of 1662 it was £700 in arrear; and in a letter to Lord Herbert he stated that "he had nothing to keep him alive, with two relations more, a daughter and a nephew, who were attending his sickly condition." He also petitioned the House of Commons, stating in his petition that "he, Samuel Hartlib, senior, had for thirty years and more exerted himself in procuring rare collections of manuscripts in all the parts of learning, which he had freely imported, transcribed, and printed, and sent to such as were most capable of making use of them; also the best experiments in husbandry and manufactures, which, by printing, he has published for the benefit of this age and posterity." What the fate of his petition was, we are uninformed; it probably met with neglect. We are also left in ignorance of the time of his death.

The statements given above of the condition of the family and fortune of Hartlib, seem hardly to accord with the following passages in the diary of Samuel Pepys:

"Home and called my wife, and took her to Clodins's, to a great wedding of Nan Hartlib to Mynheer Roder, which was kept at Goring House, with great state, cost, and noble company."-Diary, July 10, 1660.

"While I was at dinner, in came Samuel Hartlib and his brotherin-law, now knighted by the King, to request my promise of a ship for them to Holland."--Ib. August 7, 1660.

In 1667 he again notices Samuel Hartlib, as it would appear, as being of rather a gallant character.

Nan Hartlib was then evidently the niece, not the

daughter, of the elder Hartlib, who probably had not yet fallen into bad circumstances at the time of her marriage.

HENRY LAWRENCE.

Milton addressed one of his social sonnets to Lawrence, whom he styles" of virtuous father virtuous son." Warton, who is duteously followed as usual by Todd, makes, we think, a mistake here, when he says "of the virtuous son nothing has transpired;" for he is actually the person of whom he himself gives an account, as the father. It will thus appear. The sonnet, though probably subsequent to 1645, must have been written before Milton lost his sight, that is, before 1653. Now Todd quotes a letter of Lawrence's, in the Harleian MSS., written in 1646, from which it appears that his son was at that time only thirteen years of age; but the person to whom Milton addresses his sonnet was apparently a man of about his own time of life, and therefore the person who has been hitherto taken for the father, of whom Warton gives the following account:

"The virtuous father, Henry Lawrence, was member for Herefordshire in the Little Parliament, which began in 1653, and was active in settling the Protectorate of Cromwell. In consequence of his services he was made President of Cromwell's Council, where he appears to have signed many severe and arbitrary decrees, not only against the Royalists, but the Brownists, FifthMonarchymen, and other sectarists. He continued high in favour with Richard Cromwell. As innovation is progressive, perhaps the son, Milton's friend, was an Independent and a still warmer Republican. The family appears to have been seated not far from Milton's neighbourhood in Buckinghamshire, for Henry Lawrence's near relation William Lawrence, a writer, and appointed a judge in Scotland by Cromwell, and who was in 1631 a Gentleman Commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, died at Bedfont, near Staines, in Middlesex, in 1682. Hence, says Milton, v. 2,—

'Now that the fields are dank and ways are mire,

Where shall we sometimes meet ?' etc.*

Milton, in his first reply to More, written 1654, recites among the most respectable of his friends who contributed to form the Commonwealth, Montacutium, Laurentium, summo ingenio ambos optimisque artibus expolitos, etc.;' where by Montacutium we are to understand Edward Montague, Earl of Manchester,† who, while Lord Kimbolton, was one of the members of the House of Commons impeached by the King, and afterwards a leader in the rebellion. I believe they both deserved this paneygric."

Mr. Todd adds that "Lawrence, the virtuous father, is the author of a work suited to Milton's taste; on the subject of which, I make no doubt, he and the author 'by the fire helped to waste many a sullen day.' It is entitled Of our Communion and Warre with Angels, etc. Printed Anno Dom. 1646, 4to, 189 pages. The dedication is: To my Most deare and Most honoured Mother, the Lady Lawrence.' I suppose him also to be the same Henry Lawrence who printed A Vindication of the Scriptures and Christian Ordinances, 1649, Lond., 4to."

CYRIAC SKINNER.

Cyriac Skinner was the third son of William Skinner, Esq., of Thornton College, in Lincolnshire, son and heir of Sir Vincent Skinner, Knight. His mother was Bridget, second daughter of the celebrated Sir Edward Coke, to whom the poet alludes in the beginning of the first son

* It would actually appear as if Warton supposed this sonnet to have been written at Horton, and that the place of meeting was some roadside alehouse.

Rather, we think, Edward Montague, afterwards Earl of Sandwich. Milton in this passage does not speak of either him or Lawrence as his friend. The only personal friends whom he names in the list of the supporters of Cromwell, not the formers of the Commonwealth, are Fleetwood and Overton; but those two are among the "vel amicitia vel fama mihi cognitos."